This invention is in the field of digital computers and their related peripheral equipment. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention comprises a mechanically latching button on a cursor control device such as a mouse.
In typical use, movements of a cursor control device such as a trackball or mouse are tracked by the computer system and displayed as corresponding movements of a cursor or other graphics indicator on a display screen. A button on the cursor control device is used to select and manipulate items on the display. The user positions the cursor by moving the mouse or trackball and clicks on words, objects, or items by quickly pressing and releasing the button. This is known as clicking. Many computer systems, including the Apple Macintosh, denote different actions by multiple rapid clicks at the same location. For example, in some text editing operations, a single click positions the editing cursor at the clicked location, two rapid clicks at the same location select the word at the cursor location, and three rapid clicks at the same location select the entire line of text at the cursor location. It is therefore very important for the user to be able to click the button quickly.
Another basic operation is known as dragging. In this operation, the user positions the cursor over an object of interest by moving the mouse or trackball. The user then presses the button and moves to a new position while holding the button down. In a text based application such as word processing, this dragging operation may move all the text from a first cursor position to a second cursor position. In a drafting application, dragging may have the effect of moving an object such as the drawing of a wall from one location to another. In a graphics based user interface, dragging the icon representing a file from an initial position to a new position may have the effect of moving a disk file from one subdirectory or disk to another.
Dragging is cumbersome, especially when used with large graphics displays where the button must be held down for a relatively long period of time while the mouse or trackball is moved with some precision over a large distance. For example, in a computer system using a graphics interface, deleting a disk file is accomplished by dragging the icon representing the disk file onto the icon representing a trash can. If the user is dragging a file from one corner of a large display to the trash can icon in the lower far corner of the display and accidentally lifts up on the button even momentarily, this can result in placing the file in an undesirable or indeed unknown location.
The prior art does not provide a solution to this difficulty.